The Cock Clock Ch. 12

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An incessant hum, like millions of insects, woke me from sleep. I was on something softer than the lumpy jail cot. Hesitant to open my eyes, I stretched my arms. My hand bumped against bars. Was I still in jail? Slowly I opened my eyes. I was still locked up, just not the jail cell. I swung my feet around and sat up to examine my surroundings. I was confined in a metal cage located in a large room. Illumination was provided by a few bare bulbs at the ceiling and rows of machines with blinking lights along the walls. A video monitor mounted on a large casket-shaped metal box about twenty feet away showed my clock. Was it inside the casket? It might as well have been twenty miles.

A voice came out of the darkness. It was nasally and weak. "I see you're awake?"

I grabbed the bars. "Yeah. Where am I? Can you let me out of here?"

A short man with thinning white hair wearing a white lab coat stepped from the darkness. "I'm afraid it would be imprudent for me to give you any information. You brought back my device, and for that I am thankful. I've been worried about what havoc it could cause in the wrong hands." He waved his arm. "There's a silver stick next to the mattress. See it?"

I bent over. Sure enough, a 1/2-inch diameter metal baton with perforations on one end, like a microphone appeared. "Got it."

"Press the button on the end and rub it along your body."

"Why?"

"Just do it, for your own sake."

A small red light came on, confirming the stick was operational. There were faint ticks as I scanned my body. "What are you looking for?"

"Radiation."

I swallowed hard. "From what?"

"My device is powered by a plutonium ion battery. Sounds like there's been no leaks."

Shit! A nuclear powered clock was jumping me around? Good thing I didn't let it drop when - which one of my wives? - threw it at me. I pointed at the clock's image on the video monitor. "You made that thing?"

"Why, yes, right here. I'd lost track of it a number of years ago. But recently, I picked up its activity. I presume that was you. It took a while before I could generate enough power to divert it - and you - back home."

I scratched my head and then tried to arrange my hair without comb or mirror. "Which is where, exactly?"

"Now, now, I am not going to fall for any of your feeble ploys. You already know too much. What I need to decide is, after your debriefing, what I will do with you."

Doc's comment sounded ominous. Would this little scientist actually consider something fatal? Why, was he hiding something? What would be so valuable, anyway? "I don't know much. Less than you'd imagine. The clock just takes me places." I decided he didn't deserve any more information. Besides, he knew what the clock did.

"Places you reached via transmogrifications along a space/time fault."

I'd called them jumps. "Whatever. So now that you have it back, what are you going to do?" Bounce off somewhere and have first time sex with a young woman?

A door at the far end swung open, outside sunlight bursting in. The clack of shoes on the cement floor made Doc scurry in its direction. Maybe another visitor wasn't welcome. Although their voices echoed, I couldn't make out the words, only the emotion. They were arguing. The clacks got closer. Doc was shouting.

The visitor was a young woman. In the dimly lit building, her face was radiant, a natural glow I'd never witnessed. Who was this creature of desire? Doc's assistant? Maybe his daughter, given her casual clothes and dismissive behavior. She sported a blonde ponytail, with a cute face, mature breasts under a button down shirt and tight jeans that promised nicely shaped legs.

She approached my cell. I wanted her to step up on the platform and put her face close enough to kiss but she stayed on the ground. "Hey. So who are you, and why does Daddy have you locked up?"

Doc answered before I could. "I didn't capture him. He transmogrified here. By himself." Doc coughed. "After I made some last minute adjustments to the temporal guidance system, overriding the self-programmed trajectory."

I should have jumped 'home' to some version of a marriage, hopefully Maggie, and perhaps daughter Felice as well. Doc was claiming he diverted me. "My name is Charlie, and you'll have to ask him why I'm locked up."

She turned to her father, hands on hips. "So what are you doing now? Resuming experiments? You promised me you'd stop."

Experiments? "Can somebody please tell me what's going on?"

"Dad's been experimenting with time travel for as long as I can remember." She put down her backpack. "At first, he'd send animals. Rabbits. My dog!" She glared at her father. "Then he sent Mama away!"

"Jazz is correct. Up until Louise left, I'd been testing the device, sending animals on round trips with a programmed auto-return feature." Doc's face got a bit red when he faced his daughter. "But I did not send your mother away! I told you, she stole the device-"

"I don't believe you. I heard the fights." The daughter crossed her arms.

It was a nosey question but the obvious one. "Was she dissatisfied with your sex life?"

"Sex?" they shouted in unison.

"Jazz, I think you should leave," said Doc.

"I will not! Charlie needs someone to protect him. From you." Jazz's face held my attention. I hung on her every word. "Besides, I know about sex. I'm past the age of consent, you know. I can have sex if I want." Jazz shot me a smile.

Maybe Doc was wrong. Maybe he hadn't coaxed me here with his machinery. Maybe the Cock Clock brought me here to deflower Jazz. There was no way Doc would let me anywhere close to his daughter. Hell, he wouldn't even tell me where we were.

"I don't want to hear you talking like that. All right, you can stay. But it's against my better judgment." Doc took one step closer to my cage. "My sex life is none of your business." He glanced at his daughter, who was listening intently. "All right, Charlie, let's exchange information. What kinds of things did you attempt to change on your transmogrification journeys? You were joking about sex, weren't you? You tried to prevent the Kennedy's assassination perhaps?"

His mention of that event cut down the possibilities for what year I'd jumped into. I had to be past November 1963. I'd talked to the old shopkeeper about that, immediately after the first time jump. But she explained that the device was limited in purpose. "The clock doesn't allow for that. The only thing it did was send me back to-" I looked at Jazz. "- to give young women their first sexual experience."

"You used the device to support a wanton sexual lifestyle?" Doc paced, waving his arms. "How could you? You pervert!"

I grasped the bars of my cage. "You don't understand. I didn't pick the destinations, the clock did. You just said self-programmed, right? Besides, these were women whose first experience had been traumatic. Rapes. Hurtful partners. I was making things better, preparing them for a fulfilling sex life." That had been my consistent rationalization.

Doc ran his hands from front to back on his head. "This is impossible. Yes, the device has pheromone sensing technology, but never in all of my years did I ever conceive!" Doc's head slumped as he continued muttering to himself. "I didn't believe it-" He took unpredictable steps, wandering around the room.

"Did Mom want the same thing?" Jazz followed her father's random path. "Tell me, Daddy! Is that why she left?"

Doc stopped wandering and rubbed his daughter's shoulder. "Your mother left a note. Evidently, she wanted to reunite with her high school boyfriend, to correct what she viewed as a mistake. I'm so sorry."

She leaned on her father's shoulder. "But she never came back." Doc's daughter's head hung. "Didn't she love me?"

"Of course she did, with all of her heart. As soon as I realized she was gone, I tried to track her, to retrieve her and the device. But the temporal tracking circuits weren't properly calibrated. By the time I corrected the error, I'd lost her."

"She might not be dead," I offered. As a time jumper, the device had never harmed me, although like Doc said, the calibrations for me were different. "Maybe she took up with her old boyfriend, or skipped off to some other timeframe."

"When she didn't return, I thought the device had malfunctioned or melted down in some other time period. Despite her note, I never considered the possibility that she would run away voluntary."

"She loved you, Daddy." Jazz's eyes were clear and blue and soul piercing. "I know she did."

"I checked old newspaper files, looking for reports of explosions and such. Nothing. Only recently did I get a series of active readings from the device. Someone was using it." He pointed a finger. "You, sir, were using the device. It took a while for me to get a strong-enough signal. But I did. Which is why you are here instead of with your target."

"I never thought of the women as targets." I hadn't even had sex with a younger version of my sister in law on my last jump. I left that to her father. Nope, I was just trying to get out of jail and back to real-time, whatever that was.

Jazz came closer to her father. "So Mama stole the device? Really? To hook up with an old boyfriend?"

"That is correct. I didn't select her as the first human test subject."

Jazz had claimed her father had experimenting jumping animals. Did he really send a rabbit back in time, to mate with a young bunny?

Jazz gripped her father's lab coat lapels. "If Charlie here could show up here, can't Mama?"

"I wouldn't know where to send the device, or if she'd use it to return."

I considered offering to use the clock to zero in on her and bring her back. "Could I fetch her?"

"The device won't transport two people. Besides, I'd be putting Louise in jeopardy, sending you after her. You'd probably try to seduce her, and who knows how that would affect, well, everything."

Jazz turned her attention to me, the purported sex fiend. "Do you really use the device for finding young sex partners?" asked Jazz.

I nodded.

Her eyes widened. "So tell me, what is sex like? Is it everything I've heard?" She approached my cage, eyes wide. A glow, an aura, surrounded her.

Something popped inside me. My heart felt all squishy and my stomach tightened. My perspiration increased. There was something unique about this young woman, something I couldn't ignore. I shook my head to regain my composure. That's when I noticed that the clock matched her glow.

She kept talking in a voice like a siren's song. "You know, like you feel like exploding and-"

"Jazz! Get away from him!" Doc compared a machine readout with something on a clipboard he'd snatched from his desk.

I was nowhere close, probably twelve feet away. I rubbed my eyes. The aura dimmed around both Jazz and the clock. They were joined somehow. My heart returned to a normal pace. I noticed that my cage was sitting about a foot off the ground on a metal grated platform, with about two feet of walk-around space. I couldn't see what was underneath.

Doc was back at his daughter's side. "All right. I can see how you could have used the device for those purposes. And in some off-the-wall extreme perversion of logic, you might have considered yourself a hero for what you did. But you must have noticed the results. Changes in the world-"

"Damn right! I'd wake up in strange houses, sleeping with strange women-"

Doc slapped his forehead. "Again with the sex!"

"No, I mean married to different people. Sometimes other people had died-"

"You killed someone?" Jazz's face showed fear.

"No, not like that. A woman in my community was alive and then I jumped, and then when I came back, she'd previously passed away. I tried more jumps, to get her back-"

"But also to have sexual intercourse, right?" Jazz was hooked on the concept of me bouncing around in time, having sex.

The more I looked at her, the more I was sure this visit was just like my others, except this time I was physically constrained. I nodded. "But some jumps made things worse." I sat down on the mattress. "Tell me, Doc, if the clock wasn't designed for time jumps to have sex, what are the hands shaped like, uh, male organs?" Suddenly I was shy about saying 'penis' in front of Jazz.

Doc glanced at the image of the clock on the monitor screen. "Ha! They are shaped like the antenna used to communicate to the device. Look up!"

Sure enough, mounted vertically near the ceiling every ten feet or so were large cylindrical penis-shaped antennas.

"Even someone as unsophisticated as you can appreciate how small changes can affect the space/time continuum. So you see how powerful the device is. And why you are just as dangerous." And with that, he walked away. "It's time for dinner. Come along, Jazz."

After they'd taken a few steps, just for grins I tried the door of my cell. It opened with a metallic squeal. Huh? I stepped out onto the metal ledge.

Doc looked over his shoulder. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. The platform is equipped with lasers. If the cage is empty, the lasers become operable."

"Maybe we should stay here and guard him. I'll order pizza." Jazz swayed in place, "Or I could watch him."

Doc shot her a glare.

"You're not going to starve your prisoner, are you? You want the usual?" Jazz's body swayed, her weight shifting from one foot to the other. She probably didn't know how sexy that was.

"Yes, but we must stop doing carryout. It isn't healthy."

Jazz looked perfectly healthy to me. "Can I have sausage and mushroom?" If they'd allow me a choice.

"Sure, I'll get you a medium for just you. Daddy and I don't eat meat." Jazz put out her hand, smiling at me, to show how she held the upper hand with her father. "Give me your credit card." What she needed was a good old-fashioned spanking, and I was just the prisoner to give it to her. But fat chance of that. Jazz strutted away, her young hips clicking side to side.

"You see? I am not a tormentor. I'm feeding you." Doc approached a computer console near the clock's casket. He typed and read, then typed and read some more. "The device is operating within normal parameters."

"Is it inside that casket thing?" I asked.

"Yes, for containment. Just in case." Doc pulled up a chair and crossed his legs. "So, maybe you'd be willing to share a little information. Like where you got my device."

I wasn't about to have a one-way exchange. "You keep calling it 'my device.' Doesn't it have a name?"

"I called it the 'World Changer.'"

"A bit presumptuous, but probably accurate, at least from my experiences. Where are we, and what year is it?"

Doc saw me staring at his desk, in particular at an upright paper calendar. He tilted it face down. "Information like that would empower you. Sorry, the less you know, the safer you are."

Jazz came back in view. "It'll be here in half an hour, maybe quicker." She pulled up a stool and sat, legs spread.

"Tell me about Louise," I said. "I may have met her, or her mother. How old was she when she left?"

"Twenty," Jazz said.

"Honey, Charlie here should not be provided any more information than he already has."

I pressed. "And she's been gone how long?"

Jazz did some quick math, eyes looking skyward. Her fingers twitched. "Sixteen years. Two years after I was born."

That made Jazz eighteen and legal. "Which would make Louise thirty-six in your time." I tried a trick. "And what year was she born?" With that piece of information, I could compute the current year. I only hoped it wasn't too obvious a ploy.

Jazz opened her mouth to answer but Doc plastered his hand over the opening. "Muhmhmuhm."

"Charlie is a sneaky man, a devious man, who used an infinitely powerful device to have his way with young women. You are more dangerous than I thought."

"All right. You win." Maybe if I fessed up, got this whole thing off my chest, Doc would see I wasn't a threat and let me go. "I got the device from a woman at an antiques shop. Maybe she was Louise or Louise's daughter. Time gets weird when you can jump. The first time I had intercourse - " I glanced at Jazz and stopped in mid sentence.

"Go on. I'm a big girl. You can talk about sex in front of me. Can't he, Daddy?"

Doc was also uncomfortable, but Jazz had power over him. "Yes. I guess so."

A buzzer announced another visitor, probably the pizza guy. Maybe I could signal him? The door to the building was at the far end. The sun must have been setting because the open door let in less light.

Jazz returned with a large box and a smaller one. She put the big box on the metal desk and approached the cage. "Step back and I'll slip it in." I retreated from the cage door. When Jazz bent over to put the pizza box on the metal ledge, just before she pushed, I noticed that she'd unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt. The little tease! 'Slip it in' my foot! My cock twitched. "Can I get something to drink?"

Doc, who was already chomping on a slice, waved me off. "Too much electronics under you. You could short out the systems with a simple spill."

Jazz had returned to a seat next to her father. "He wouldn't do that. Would you?"

The way she pursed her lips when she said 'wood' got me harder. "I don't want to electrocute myself, that's for sure."

"You'll manage." Doc wiped tomato sauce from his mouth. "So, you were describing your first experience?"

The box held no clues, just the name "Mario's Pizza" and a generic cartoon pizza boy carrying a flat box above his head. No address and certainly no date. I lifted a slice and took a small bite. They were expecting my story. "Yeah, the first time, I set the alarm, which the proprietor said I shouldn't do because it was broken."

"The alarm switch is time activator! She practically dared you to use the device. Then what?"

"I went to bed and woke up next to a young woman whose nightgown was - uh, pulled up. She was rubbing against me, and practically insisted that I rape her. Except she was asking me."

Jazz stopped taking nibbles. "Hardly a rape, if you ask me."

"I would not hold you responsible under such circumstances," said Doc.

Doc would let me fuck Jazz if she wanted it? Damn, did he know what he just said? "The young lady's father was not as understanding. He whacked me good with a baseball bat-"

"Giving you a head trauma that disrupted your brain transmissions. The emergency circuits in the device take that to indicate peril and transmogrifies the operator to a safe place."

"The shop keeper explained it different. In fact, she was the one who told me this was a device for time traveling to give young women good first sex. It wasn't my idea at all. And she wanted the clock back. Said she'd loaned it to me, not sold it. Which was rubbish, because I'd paid her for it, fair and square-"

"Hold on!" Doc scratched his head. "Louise and I once joked that the combination of pheromone detection, GPS and access to the world's databases could facilitate transmogrifications for sexual purposes."

"Daddy, sometimes I wish you'd speak English."

It felt good to share with someone about my experiences. Kind of like lifting a burden off my shoulders. "Yeah, except somehow having sex with Angie started a chain of changes-"

"Whoa!" Jazz nearly choked despite small bites. "Who's Angie?"

"The mother of one of my daughter's friends."

"You have a daughter? How old is she?"

"About your age." No reason to tell her I eventually did a short jump and fucked her too. "After years of marriage, my wife admitted that her first time was brutal, in an alley. I jumped back and tried to fix my wife's first time. And I succeeded, but in the process I changed things. When I jumped back, she was no longer my wife. Someone else was."

"And your daughter?" asked Doc.

"Gone, as if she'd never been born."